Manchester United face losing as many as six senior players at the end of the season.

Manchester United face losing as many as six senior players at the end of the season.

The Telegraph says manager Sir Alex Ferguson faces a massive test of his skills no fewer than six senior players are expected to leave United at the end of the season.

Edwin van der Sar, Gary Neville, Owen Hargreaves, Tomasz Kuszczak, Michael Owen and Wes Brown are all likely to move on, either through retirement or a lack of first-team opportunities.

With doubts also hovering over the Old Trafford futures of Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes, the United squad which starts the 2011-12 campaign could be the most youthful since Ferguson replaced Paul Ince, Mark Hughes and Andrei Kanchelskis with emerging stars such as Neville, Scholes, David Beckham and Nicky Butt in the summer of 1995.